This story is getting such extensive coverage in the Blogosphere, you’d think Moses just discovered an 11th Commandment etched on the back of one of his stone tablets. Something to the effect of, “Thou shalt not restrict a user’s ability to exercise a license they’ve legitimately paid for.”

Well, Steve Job isn’t Moses, but he is as close as you get to an iconic authority on the subject of downloadable music. And here’s what Steve had to say on the subject of Digital Rights Management, or DRM, in an opinion piece posted to Apple.com earlier today:

“The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”

For a media executive – and let’s face it, as the majority stockholder in Disney, Steve Jobs is a media executive – this is nothing short of sacralidge. And unbelievably cool.

To read Mr. Jobs treatise on the whole DRM issue, click here. It’s a good read, and we highly recommend it.

I have several devices that I depend on every day: my MacBook Pro, my Garmin StreetPilot 3270 GPS, my iPod. And while I can think of ways all these devices could be improved, there is only one device that I would gladly chuck into the ocean and never touch again, if not for the one vital job it does marginally well.

That device is my cell phone.

So when Apple introduced the iPhone, I had a geek-gasm right on the spot. Finally, my prayers had been answered: a handheld device that’ll connect me to people by phone, mail, IM, and to the Internet like a computer; and to my music and videos like an iPod.

Finally, a smartphone that’s actually smart. (more…)

It was time for that once-a-decade-or-so chore of buying a new bed. My husband and I both dreaded what lay ahead. Our weekends would now be forfeit as we cut an endless trail from mattress store to mattress store, cringing as the wheeling and dealing ensued. We’d flop ourselves down on countless beds, attempting to discern the difference between identical mattresses that were probably manufactured by the same company. Different names, similar mattresses, wildly varying prices – no matter how savvy a shopper you are, how could you not wonder if maybe you got ripped off when the process was done? (more…)